Lyrics

[ras.s]

....and here comes the argument. I don't know if it's as simple as that. The last summer I read several collections of persian poetry (from Hafez, Abu Nuwas, Abul-Ala al Ma'arri, Mawlana Rumi and the still-alive syrian Adonis).. Those poets do nothing but dwell in their own pitifulness, they do very well with doing nothing but trying to express themselves through telling how they feel about things. Genres of Persian/Iranian poetry then again are very unique in their style and characteristics and I suggest everyone to read some of that stuff. I'll probably fuse some of that to my own lyrics later on ..

[jancivil]

I don't mind a message in a lyric. I found that kind of remark, 'don't go in thinking you have anything to say, just give us your subjective day' kind of empty... it depends, some message lyric or poetry is clunky. I think it ought to convey a quality of humor generally.

I think commercial lyrics rely on broken hearted or unrequited love sentiment to excess. I hate it. Like most Country songs are about some pitiful shit.

You say you can't live with what you been through
Well ladies you can be an asshole too
You might pretend you ain't got one on the bottom of you-hoo

But don't fool yourself girl, it's lookin at you
Don't fool yourself girl, it's winkin at you
Don't fool yourself girl, it's blinkin at you
- Broken Hearts are for Assholes, Frank Zappa

I don't know what that book tricky likes does exactly, but the aspect of commerciality did get brought into discussion. There are marks you hit in making something for the masses, and there may even be a little bit of science to it. So it is a form of craft, whether or not we go into aesthetics. I learned screenplay form from Syd Field's books. Books are pretty much a go-to for information about known forms. I'm skeptical of people that teach how to come up with ideas, it comes across as a con game to me. If you don't have ideas, what are you doing, who are you kidding?

As far as books, I found Deb's remark, the bards etc didn't have books to tell them how a thing works, interesting. It's true, things were not widely disseminated at one time and they seemed to be able to make it happen. I don't think the access to information does anything through itself, it's the quality of mind dealing with information. It seems to carry an aspect of an inversion, the more information and now instant access, the more confidence the dull-minded have and they proceed not with knowledge but with an inchoate collection of notions they can't form into a whole. The ability to hyperlink encourages a deficit of attention span, a spotty focus...

So in music there are all of these people looking for 'tips and tricks' instead of a steady if slow process of building the chops from the ground up, which there are established paths towards.

I think we are in a time of ever diminishing returns... But who knows what history will show of our time, if there will even be a history of our time. There is just more of people trying to do a thing out of the dissemination of information about it, which could seem to obscure that which is outstanding.

[ras.s]

Two classic books that relate to this subject and that have been available for poets both in the west and the east basically before the counting of time are Aristoteles' Poetics and Rhetorics. Both are wortwhile reading, even though they don't really target the making of popular music songs - they're more about dramaturgy and using words persuasively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_%28Aristotle%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric_%28Aristotle%29

[rockstar_not]

I don't know what that book tricky likes does exactly, but the aspect of commerciality did get brought into discussion.

The book that tricky likes is also one that I like. It's more of an introduction into a process and habit of songwriting. It spends quite a bit of time on song forms. I will say that book inspired me to write my first 'chorus-less' song with a refrain line instead at the end of each verse, simply because the challenge was there in the book to do so.

While books cannot do the hard work for you, they can certainly open one's eyes up to ideas that one hasn't considered before.

The Robin Frederick book is good for that, if you have no background in lyric writing whatsoever or even if you do, for forming lyrics into chunks that have been time tested in popular music.

It's an incredibly popular book and gets very high marks from most on Amazon. While it wouldn't help a Shakespeare or a Keats or a Dickinson, it's helpful to many.

I don't understand why the suggestion of this book was derided so strongly in this thread from those who admittedly haven't bothered to take even take a look at it's content, but yet judge it's content and/or usefulness simply based on the relative fame of the author.

It does not dive deeply into theory. It's a book about observation, then action. Think of it as a Seth Godin style book on Songwriting. Seth's business books are like this - short, digestible nuggets with each nugget ending with a call to action. Most of the articles are not more than a few pages long, with each of them encouraging the reader to go try out what was just read about. In this regard, it excels - as has been pointed out the real work of songwriting and lyric writing is the practice of it and the reaction to inspiration.

It encourages a practice of both invention as well as mimicry by 'ghosting' popular songs - taking their chord progressions, tempos, etc. and writing new lyrics and melodies over them.

It's just over 30$. People spend that every day here at KVR on another plugin that they may or may not use, or waste that much on espresso and sugared coffees or energy drinks each week.

It's a tool, not a magic bullet. But it might serve as inspiration (just read the reviews at amazon) where inspiration is needed. It certainly did that for me.

The bards that became popular did so likely out of both inspiration as well as repetition of what the public enjoyed.

The OP is not enjoying his/her current lyrical output. The Frederick book and the Pat Pattison free course from Berklee/coursera can help him/her to look at lyric writing from some new angles, and to hopefully be inspired to enjoy the process anew.

[jancivil]

Well, people bring in a strong POV and history of the interactions in the forum into it. The original post was 'what advice do you have' and in lieu of a person giving advice books were touted, and one of them contains 'shortcuts to' in its title.

You make a persuasive argument for the Robin Frederick book. I'm still liking my own POV, that things in such a book can be modeled in observation by a person with the right aptitude for that. I think being concrete with actual exercises is a very good approach though.

[rockstar_not]

Well, people bring in a strong POV and history of the interactions in the forum into it. The original post was 'what advice do you have' and in lieu of a person giving advice books were touted, and one of them contains 'shortcuts to' in its title.

You make a persuasive argument for the Robin Frederick book. I'm still liking my own POV, that things in such a book can be modeled in observation by a person with the right aptitude for that. I think being concrete with actual exercises is a very good approach though.

Yes, we each bring our own past into these discussions. I happen to be an engineer, supposedly left-brain only, with a penchant for songwriting and music making just for my own entertainment and for the enjoyment of a very small online community.

I have almost no formal music theory training, and certainly no formal poetry or song-lyric writing training.

I am observant about many things, but I don't think I would discover the refrain-line form of songs without some kind of prompting or source of information. One rather useful form of observation is to watch what works for others. The examples in the Frederick book (and the Pattison course) provide 'aha' moments upon which one can act and mimic or evolve from.

The general public likes to have lyrical hooks, and I had never even thought about the delivery of the hook in a refrain line as a song form. After writing perhaps 100 songs with lyrics (AABA form the major lot of them) I decided to set out to write a song with a refrain line only and no choruses merely from the prompting that the topic in the book had in it. It was a pleasant experience. Would I have discovered this particular form somewhere else? Perhaps in a different book. But since I'm a rather old guy with knowledge of diff eq and DSP but not necessarily of the arts, with kids in college and so forth, I went looking for books by people that I respect and with whom I had conversation. This one was highly recommended by many people in the February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) community and I bought it as a result. Just the inspiration to try the refrain form and to understand some of it's uniqueness was worth the 30$ to me. Did I write a 'hit'? Of course not to the public, but for my own personal use, absolutely.

The Pat Pattison course comes at lyric writing from an entirely different angle; and yet, I can see where the points in the Frederick book, and the unstable/stable balance that Pattison has throughout his course and books, intersect in what becomes interesting to the ear. From Pattison, one of the nuggets I will always remember is that 3 line pre-chorus sections seem to have the most impact when the chorus is delivered. The odd number of lines sets up a tension that gets paid off/relieved by the chorus. That's his premise, and he provides many known examples of it (several supplied by Rik Ocasek).

For someone that is a hobbyist, these types of tidbits are very valuable. I'm taking the Pattison course again, hoping for more of the content to stick. It's free after all and he's a pretty entertaining lecturer.

-Scott

[Tricky-Loops]

I don't understand why the suggestion of this book was derided so strongly in this thread from those who admittedly haven't bothered to take even take a look at it's content, but yet judge it's content and/or usefulness simply based on the relative fame of the author.

This is why I got that angry. I accept every opinion and if someone would have written that he/she doesn't like the book because there aren't many pages about the best chord progressions etc., then I would have understood it. But just because Robin Frederick writes songs for Disney -- why not? Why shouldn't she write songs for Disney or for Sailormoon or even for videogames?

It's just over 30$. People spend that every day here at KVR on another plugin that they may or may not use, or waste that much on espresso and sugared coffees or energy drinks each week.

+ 1,000,000

And I'm of the same batch. As soon as I have $30, what do I do with it? Instead of buying a good book about songwriting and practicing & playing on my keyboard and writing some lyrics, I buy another plugin - even if I have 10 plugins which I still haven't tested. But I must admit, since many months now I'm in deep writer's block. I cannot write a single strophe anymore, I feel like pumped dry... Maybe I get new inspiration when I make some sound design instead of writing songs.

Regarding the title of the book, "Shortcuts to Hit Songwriting", as I've said, that's absolutely misleading. It should better be called "Suggestions & exercises about lyrics writing and song structure". But I'm used to these exaggerated hollywood-like titles whenever I buy books from the USA, it's like "Get rich in 10 minutes!" or so...

While Pat Pattison is more concentrating on the technical aspects of lyric writing, Robin Frederick emphasizes several times how important it is to convey a feeling.

The most important thing is that the listener can respond to the lyrics, that he can connect to them. That doesn't mean that every song has to be about "you love me and I love you" - you can even make some dadaistic songs with a few enigmatic keywords...

(Be careful with rhymes - to much of them transforms even the best composition to a ridiculous nursery rhyme! Except if you want to compete with Ba-Ba-Ba-Black-Sheep...)

For example, I'm a big fan of the minimalistic punchy punk lyrics of a DAF song! (DAF = Deutsch-Amerikanische-Freundschaft; a German electro punk band) Actually I like them more than a rap song where I have to listen to the whole life story in 3.41 minutes...

[jancivil]

I am observant about many things, but I don't think I would discover the refrain-line form of songs without some kind of prompting or source of information. One rather useful form of observation is to watch what works for others.

the first thing I ever took into the studio, was a guy's song that didn't have so much a chorus as a refrain 'Seeing is Believing, Love is the answer again'. It was stupid enough that a guy for UA wanted a demo. This really was exactly the kind of song that has 'hit' written all over it, someone that knew how to play the game could've done. That's exactly all I remember about the song and I can remember the chords for it, still imprinted. Strong hook. We were like 17 iirc.

I wasn't interested in writing songs very much. I had written a couple very young but I didn't sing worth a shit and it didn't seem like something to pursue. But I'm a special kind of idiot that would just come up with all kind of things which weren't the usual mode of operation out of curiosity. The guy with the song and I, one of us, probably me uncovered some little pamphlet that had all the cliche chord progressions laid out. It's just funny to remember 'OH! THAT'S why all these songs are the same! Like we're complete idiots. But he came up with some interesting progressions that were all wrong. And by ear some total Beatles kind of things he just copped completely such as in the couple songs we were able to get in and produce for demo. I definitely knew to rely on a hook even with my general outlier mentality.

[debra1rlo]

Deb and Tricky I think you've both made your point.

[Hink]

Take every 3rd word in each line of any of the lengthy posts in this thread, put it to some kind of cadence, add some music and mix to taste

[rockstar_not]

For what it's worth, one of my favorite songs that I wrote music to came from lyrics that long timer KVRian Jens posted in the 'lyrics needing music' thread that used to live at KVR at one time. I corrected a few deutsch-lish errors and the melody and chords and feeling just came to me upon reading jens' lyrics. It was almost like a japanese watercolor.

https://soundcloud.com/rockstar_not/sco ... tram-again

My online collaborator Andy McRory recorded a nice fretless bass part that I layered in after I posted the song many years ago.

[GalleryHakon]

Not having tried, I don't think it's useful reading books on lyric writing to improve one's own skills. You might just try to emulate someone else's methods. Lyric and poetry writing is a very personal thing, both in content and method.

By the way, I have not really written any lyrics for songs, but I have written around 1000 or so poems in my time, most of them lyrical, and so I have mused a bit about these things in the past.

The only thing I can think of that really works is to write and write and write some more, but also when something doesn't really sound right, try to find out what it is and learn from it.

A few pointers:

Rhythm is more important than rhyme - in fact, a rhyme placed wrongly in the rhythm detracts rather than adds to the lyricism of a song.

When using rhymes, people tend to notice the second phrase of a rhyming pair the most, whereas most people when they write think of the first phrase first and then try to find something that fits with it, often ending up with feeble rhymes. Try turning things around so the best phrase ends with the second rhyming word.

AABB rhyming schemes can sound childish. ABAB is better, but also give your listeners a rest from rhymes with a bit ABCB or even ABCDB.

Alliteration makes things sound better, but it's more subtle, and people might not even pick up on what it is about it that sounds good, but it works.

Use a dictionary. Not just to make sure your words are pronounced correctly (sometimes that can affect both rhythm and rhyme), but also to make sure you find any other meanings that might influence how your song is interpreted.

Ask the advice of a native speaker, especially to avoid idiomatic mistakes.

[ariston]

Ask the advice of a native speaker, especially to avoid idiomatic mistakes.

There's a German singer (Philip Boa) who turned bad Denglisch ("I make me me nothing, you nothing, out of the dust") into an art form, so there are exceptions to this. Usually sensible advice, though.

[spacecult]

Not having tried, I don't think it's useful reading books on lyric writing to improve one's own skills. You might just try to emulate someone else's methods. Lyric and poetry

A few pointers:

Rhythm is more important than rhyme - in fact, a rhyme placed wrongly in the rhythm detracts rather than adds to the lyricism of a song.

'zactly. it's how bob dylan is an occasional genius and how rob zombie gets by.

[Linux0s]

a good lyricist develops (over time and bowls) a sense of when they will be misinterpreted and perhaps has a bit of fun with it.

How many bowls over how much time?